~ Award Winning Dungeon Design

Lair of the Gargantuan Burrow Owl

“Anyway, 10:30, the other night, I go out in my yard, and there’s the Wurster kid, looking up in those trees. I say, “What are you looking for?” He says “I’m looking for my burrow owl.” I say, “Jumping Jesus on a Pogo Stick. Everybody knows the burrow owl lives. In a hole. In the ground. Why the hell do you think they call it a burrow owl, anyway?”

– “Stuart” by the Dead Milkmen

Lair of the Gargantuan Burrow Owl

Recently Glen Welch was posting stuff about the old Gargantua monsters from BECMI D&D – there was a famous wizard in Mystara by the unimaginative name / moniker of Gargantua who made a lot of very large monsters. Of course, the one time we dealt with Gargantua’s monsters in a D&D game I was playing in, the DM kept having us run into things like Gargantuan Tea Cup Poodle, Gargantuan Sprite, and the terrifying Gargantuan Pygmy Marmoset.

But not all of Gargantua’s creations are as harmless as the gargantuan pygmy marmoset… as the town of Westerwick discovered when their church of the Lords of Eternity turned out to be sitting on a hillside that was chosen as the new lair of a gargantuan burrow owl.

Lair of the Gargantuan Burrow Owl (no grid)

This 30 foot tall long-legged giant owl has reopened an old burrow that had been covered by the hillside growth… unfortunately working its way through the church of the Lords of Eternity in the process. In the week since it moved into town, it has also destroyed two houses across the road in the process of entering and leaving the burrow, and has terrorized the local farmers, hunting and eating much of the local livestock in its dawn and dusk hunts.

I originally drew this map while (of course) listening to the Dead Milkmen during Mapvember. The theme for the map that day was “Burrow” and even though I wasn’t listening to “Stuart” at the time (I was listening to the Big Lizard in my Backyard album), I couldn’t resist somehow working the burrow owl into the map.

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